A dispatch from the other side

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place.... like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."- Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

I didn’t intend to leave things here the way that I did. I had already drafted up several other blog posts that I was planning to finalize and post before I finished my Peace Corps service and left Madagascar on April 11^th, 2014. But it seems that I was overambitious in just how much I could actually accomplish during my final month in Madagascar, in which I had to pack up and leave my house, complete all of the required Peace Corps “exit” paperwork and tasks, wrap up my work project, study for and take the final exam for the microeconomics course I was taking online, make a decision about grad school programs, and just generally achieve the monumental task of saying goodbye to the place and the people that had occupied my heart for the last 2 years. So many things were left undone. The day before I left Vangaindrano, I was frantically trying to finish a sign painting project in the center of town, because I wanted to leave it with a fresh coat of paint when I said goodbye. But the sun was setting, and I had to admit to myself that it wasn’t going to get finished. So, exhausted and emotional, I gave the paint and instructions to a friend in town and asked him if he could please finish. Like that painting project, I didn’t get to write everything that I wanted to. Looking at my blog recently, it feels wrong to leave it with a post listing my likes and dislikes about the country that I called home for 2 years, and which I am spending a lot of time missing these days. So I am remedying that now, even though I have been back for a year at this point.

I know it may seem like leaving America to go live in a remote, undeveloped country for 2 years is a difficult act, but looking back, I think that leaving Vangaindrano for good was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I was lucky enough to reconnect with many friends shortly after my return, and talking about my experience helped cement some feelings in my heart. When I talk to people about leaving and why it was so hard, I tell them about the extremely strange notion of having to uproot yourself from a community that you spent years working to integrate yourself into, one that absolutely became your home, with neighbors who felt like family-- and knowing that after that departure, even if you come back, you will never have that experience again. Nothing can ever be the same, because the experience of living in a town as a Peace Corps volunteer is so unique and special that it just can’t be recreated. This harsh reality hit me as soon as I sat down in the yellow taxi-brousse that had picked me up in front of my house and loaded up my belongings for the journey to Tana. Seeing my little toddler friend Sarobidy wave to me as the van pulled away suddenly forced the excruciating reality upon me that he wouldn’t be a part of my life anymore, and nor will I be a part of his. Two weeks later, in each of the final segments of the journey home, I could not stop crying: when I made my last and final sign-out of the Peace Corps house, when I sat in the taxi to the airport, and when the customs officer stamped my passport one last time. And then when I called Sarobidy’s mother Marcelline to say a final goodbye before boarding the plane, she told me that he kept asking aiza i Emily? (“where is Emily?”) Hearing this brought upon the tears even more, and I kept my sunglasses on while walking bleary-eyed onto the tarmac. I just didn’t want to have anyone ask me why I was crying, because how I could I even begin to explain to them?

Little Sarobidy taking a nap under the avocado tree in my front yard, with Harry the cat and Milou the kitten keeping him sleepy company.

Of course, leaving Madagascar did have happy connotations: my first stop was Indonesia to meet up with one of my best friends and her brother, who was a PCV there. As difficult as it was to leave my friends in Madagascar, both Peace Corps and local Malagasy, I knew that there would be some wonderful people waiting for me one the other side. I also think that taking that trip before actually returning to America was an important “halfway” step before plunging into the murky pool of readjustment to American life. I had heard many a PCV say that it’s actually a lot harder to return home to America than it is to go away. I didn’t give this statement enough credence before, and although I knew it would be difficult to come home, I didn’t realize just how difficult it would be. I will be honest here and say that my first 3 months back were some of the most trying months of my life. Everything we take for granted here was a challenge for me to get used to: driving, shopping in a grocery store, being incredibly connected at all times, and figuring out how to eat in America (given my massively different diet in Madagascar) so that I wouldn’t feel sick. I also had to figure out how to accurately describe my experience to everyone who asked the simple yet difficult-to-answer question of “how was it?” Aside from these challenges which are no doubt common to any returned PCV, I also was met with a few unique ones pretty much as soon as I returned. Firstly, I had to take care of a surprise health issue that presented itself during my final physical exam with the Peace Corps doctors, and because it was something that occurred while I was a federal government employee, it had to be covered under the federal employee worker’s comp program. So that meant that approximately 25% of my days were spent dealing with either the Department of Labor or my doctor’s office. Secondly, my grad school plans were turned on their head because of a change with the program I was originally planning to attend, and then turned again when I got a phone call on May 9^th from Duke (my first choice school) saying that they had a spot for me after all, after I had been on the waitlist for 5 months. So I made the decision to switch my business school plans to Duke, which brought me great excitement… and also great stress, because the tasks that I had to accomplish in 2 months in order to make this work were monumental—chief of which was their calculus requirement. Yes, that’s right: I spent my summer studying calculus under the gun so that I could finish the prerequisite by the hard-and-fast July 15^th deadline. I had no Memorial Day, no July 4^th, spent nearly every beautiful summer day hunched over books indoors, and although I took 2 weeks to visit friends and family in NYC, LA, and DC, I spent nearly every one of those days studying while my friends were at work. I wasn’t even sure if I would succeed, because trying to finish a college-level calculus course in less than 2 months is no easy task, but I’m happy to report that I passed the course with the grade I needed, and was able to cross off that huge item from my to-do list. Additionally, I was able to take care of my health issue thanks to some excellent medical treatment, which took a humongous burden off my mind.

A goodbye picture of me (and Harry) with Fanomeja, one of the sweetest boys in my neighborhood. He was a great friend to me, my garden, and my cats.

I’m now just about done with my first year of the MBA program at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business—which feels crazy to write. The first month here was a huge adjustment, and I spent a lot of time feeling jarred by just how different my life had become, as well as struggling to adapt to my new identity as an MBA student. Getting used to a rigorous school schedule was also difficult, given that I hadn’t been a fulltime student in many years. But the adjustment got easier, and I’ve met a wonderful group of friends at school. I genuinely feel like Duke is exactly where I am supposed to be, and I’m excited to be spending the next year growing, learning, and continuing to become the person I want to be. I’ve taken inspiration from my Peace Corps project to pursue a career in corporate sustainability, and my dream job is to work at a large consumer products company helping them operate more responsibly and sustainably, especially when it comes to sourcing ingredients. I feel extremely fortunate to be on that path already, and will be doing my summer MBA internship in India, working with Coca-Cola’s office of sustainability. When I left my career in New York to join Peace Corps, I legitimately had no idea what would come of that brash move. But I realize now how I grateful I am for the experience career-wise, and far from being just a break from the real world, it refocused me on what my goals are, helped me become a more resilient and adaptable worker, and gave me the adventurous, more-than-a-desk-job work experience I was craving.  

With beautiful Marinah, in front of her grandmother's coffee and bread stand-- my daily breakfast spot.

When I look back at my experience now, the twelve months’ distance from my Madagascar departure brings about two distinct emotions. The first is a bit of rose-colored-glasses nostalgia, when I miss Mada and my life there so deeply because all I can think about are the good memories and amazing experiences: the wonder of exploring a new country, the pride I experienced at wowing people by being able to speak their indigenous language, the thrill I felt flying down the steep hills of the Route Nationale 12 on my bike, the surge of familial love I felt when little Sarobidy fell asleep in my arms one day, the crazy biking/boating/swimming/camping/hiking adventures I had with my friends, the daily explosion of cuteness from the litter of kittens I raised in my final months at site, and the general sense of freedom and belonging that came after I’d been in the country for over a year and really felt at home. Looking at all of my pictures now and seeing myself all blonde and tan from two years of tropical sun, toned and healthy from daily biking and a vegan diet, with a smile full of contentment and joy, it’s hard not to wonder, was this the best version of me? Of course, my mind tends to gloss over the daily struggles of Mefloquine-induced anxiety, the frequent harassment, the infamous rat problem of my first few months at site, the maddening feeling of being in a taxi-brousse that only travels 20km in one hour, and my deteriorating health towards the end of my service. But even when I remind myself of the bad parts of my service, I still look back on it as the best thing I have ever done, and the most rewarding experience of my life.

I almost can't look at this picture without crying: the cuteness of the 4 girls (Prisca, Marinah, Rojo, and Lanisa with her little supermodel pose), plus Harry wandering into the frame, just reminds me so much of everything I left behind in Vangaindrano.

The other emotion that often presents itself, especially when I look at pictures posted by current volunteers, is that of regret. As is so often the case in life, I didn’t realize what a gift I’d been given until far too late. My chief regret is not pushing myself out of my comfort zone more and becoming more integrated in my community early on. In the beginning, I was so insecure about my Malagasy language skills that I was afraid to have conversations with people, since I’d be scared that I wouldn’t be able to understand them. It wasn’t until woefully late in my service that I realized just how precious my integration within Ampasy (my neighborhood of Vangaindrano) was, and that it was probably the most priceless experience anyone could ever ask for: to become, as a complete stranger and total foreigner, as much a part of a community in rural southeastern Madagascar to feel like I had gained a family. Had I realized this earlier, I would have forced myself to overcome my language fears and just get out talking to people more. And along those lines, I regret not challenging myself to get better at speaking and understanding Malagasy, because I wish I could have understood people better and had deeper, more meaningful conversations. Although I worked incredibly hard studying the language, I know that I could have forced myself to spend more time talking with people and practicing early on in my service, even when I didn’t feel confident with my language. As an introvert, my natural tendency was to spend lots of my free time in my house or garden, so I wish that I hadn’t allowed myself to fall into this pattern, and that I had balanced my alone time with more socializing with my neighbors. The fact that here I am, a Returned Peace Corps volunteer feeling regretful, is ironic because “regret avoidance” was a large reason for why I decided to leave New York and finally join Peace Corps-- I didn’t want to be another person lamenting not having served as a PCV when they had the chance.

April 11, 2014: the day I officially became a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, along with 5 of my fellow PCVs, and flew to Indonesia.

But despite those occasional feelings of regret, I remind myself that no volunteer’s service is the same as another’s, and there is no such thing as a “perfect” experience. I may not have had the same kind of Peace Corps service as my friend in a rural village down the road, but I nevertheless benefitted so greatly from it, and have to hope that I made an impact on my community, if only a small one.

Finally, towards the end of my service I began to compile a list of the changes I had noticed in myself during my two years of being away. I knew I would find myself somewhat altered from my time in Madagascar, so I wanted to take stock of what I had noticed being different in myself. Of course, I had intended to post this a year ago, so the difference now is looking at this list of changes and seeing if any of them have stuck with me—which actually may be more interesting, come to think of it.

Changes that I Hope Stay with Me:

-          Being a self-starter and working on projects without much direction. This was a great thing to get practice with. The American working culture very much hews towards corporate hand-holding with lots of touchpoints and check-ins. In Madagascar, I was essentially handed a project and told to make it happen. It ended up being one of the greatest learning experiences of my life.

-          Learning to accept uncertainty and roll with the punches. Life changes when you learn not to waste energy on things you can’t control. I learned this lesson many times over waiting for a delayed taxi-brousse to leave or having plans change unexpectedly due to torrential rains. I began to accept the fact that things will go wrong, and developed a strategy for how to deal with these annoyances: allow yourself to be angry about it for 5 minutes, vent if you need to, then move on and figure out what to do next. You can either sit around stewing in anger and frustration, or you can get on with life.

-          Being more spontaneous. I am a planner by nature, and that part of me hasn’t completely gone away (I just entered all my 2015-2016 school calendar dates into Outlook, hello), but I feel like I am now more able to embrace the unexpected and be a little more spontaneous. Some of the best times I’ve ever had in my life are when I dropped my carefully curated plans and did something completely different. Like crashing a Malagasy wedding party and dancing until 2 in the morning with complete strangers who became best friends for the night, for example.

-          Learning to ask for help when I need it. I’ve always prided myself on being independent and self-sufficient, but it was a huge lesson for me to realize that being thrust into a completely new environment meant that I actually did need to rely on others. It is incredibly humbling to realize this, but sometimes you need to let yourself be taken care of. When I made that first phone call to a more experienced volunteer and said “I need your help”, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. (And it looks like I am not alone in learning this lesson—see #11 on this list.)

-          Avoiding regrets as much as possible. As mentioned above, joining the Peace Corps was a huge strategy for personal regret avoidance. Having done that, I am trying to take the same tactic with other things in my life. I think this list is pretty great, and although I am definitely guilty of some of those items which I am sure will turn into future regrets, I’m doing pretty well on things like going to graduate school, learning another language, and traveling. J

-          Being more outdoorsy. This was something hugely lacking in my life between college, when I was outdoors riding horses quite a bit, and Peace Corps, which had me biking, hiking, camping, and swimming all the time. I didn’t realize how much I missed being outside and not surrounded by sun-obscuring skyscrapers until I found myself doing things like walking through the forest with a group of local villagers so they could show me a hidden natural pool, or hopping on my bike for a 5-hour ride to the nearest big town, just for the fun of it.

-          Being more open and honest with people. It seems counterintuitive, but going so far away helped me to do this, much more so than if I had just stayed in NYC. The enormity of my 2-year undertaking brought about an urge to open up and be truthful with people whom I cared about, because it was entirely possible (though statistically not likely) that I wouldn’t come home from Madagascar. Fortunately, I did, and having been this open and honest with my friends and family before leaving helped me reconnect with them when I returned home.

-          Not being a smartphone addict. I came across these two pieces while I was serving in Mada, and it was such a jarring reminder of what life is like in America where almost everyone has a smartphone with near-unlimited amounts of data. After over a year of using a pay-as-you-go system with a circa 2007 dumb phone, I had forgotten what it was like to always be connected to everything and everyone. I told myself I wouldn’t fall into this trap when I returned, but I sadly seem to be falling back into my old habits, and it’s something I need to work on.

-          Not spending obscene amounts of time online. Similar to the smartphone realization, I also forgot what it was like to have unlimited internet when I had to pay per MB for everything I did online. It really makes you question whether it’s worth reading online gossip sites if you know each click will cost you. But as this study interestingly pointed out, there’s still an opportunity cost to time spent online even if you don’t pay-per-click: less time sleeping, exercising, learning, and socializing. Just as the case of the smartphone addicition above, now that I once again have the luxury of unlimited wifi I find myself spending way more time on the computer than I would like to be, so this is yet another thing that I need to work on. I lament the fact that I no longer have time to read books for fun, but then I remind myself that in Madagascar, when I didn’t have Netflix or unlimited Facebook, I read 97 books in 2 years.  

-       Dancing, always. No matter how old or uncool I am. Because I just freaking love it.

Me dancing with one of our chaperones' kids at the closing party for the Sud Est GLOW camp.

Cute kids eating bananas and rice

The neighborhood kids come over a lot to use my colored pencils and coloring books. I gave them a banana snack one day recently, and they ended up being really funny while eating, so I'm glad I caught it on video. The one of the left is my little man Sarobidy, but I unfortunately don't know the name of the one on the right-- he's relatively new.

Here's Sarobidy (and his brother) again, demonstrating what champion rice eaters Malagasy kids are. I thought it would be funny to capture a video of them chowing down on rice, because that's pretty much the essence of Malagasy culture: rice is life.

Zaza kely

If there's one commonality among all Peace Corps volunteers around the world, it's the frequency of our interactions with kids. Children, in their natural openness and curiosity, tend to glom on to Peace Corps volunteers in any town-- visiting our houses, saying emphatic hellos, and wanting to help us with daily tasks. I often find myself acting as a sort of combination Pied Piper/court jester for the under-10 set in my neighborhood of Vangaindrano. On days when I am feeling just "over it" and sick of my town and Peace Corps life, I can always count on my little kid (zaza kely, in Malagasy) crew to cheer me up. Here are some photos of some of my favorite little ones:

These are 4 of my favorite girls, and I just love this photo of them. From left to right it's Prisca, Marinah, Rojo (pronounced "rood-zoo"), and Lanisa. I just love Lanisa's little hand-on-hip pose, and the fact that my cat Harry wandered into the picture. Sadly, Rojo and the rest of her family (including her little sister Fenitra who was my absolute favorite) moved to Tana back in October, so I will probably never see her again.

One thing that irks me about this country is that it's bad luck to say that a kid is cute, because there is a superstition that cute kids will be snatched away by some evil spirit. So to 'protect' a kid, you're not ever supposed to comment on his or her adorableness. And since there is also a widely-circulated myth that vazahas (white foreigners) steal babies, I REALLY can't ever say a kid is cute. The problem with this is that there are so many absolutely adorable children, and not being able to say something kills me! So to get around it I say that they are really good at smiling, or something similar.

This little girl, Sarobidy ("precious" in Malagasy) was one of the best parts of my homestay experience during my training in Mantasoa. She came to stay with my host family about a week after I arrived-- I think she was a cousin-- and she just brightened my life whenever I saw her. She loved posing like this for photos and she always had a smile on her face when she saw me and would exclaim "AIM-LEEEEE!" My favorite memory of her is when I was going to fetch water with her and my host sisters Eva and Tanya, and I was wearing my sunglasses (as I always have to in this intense sunlight). Suddnely Sarobidy decided that she absolutely had to wear sunglasses too, and refused to go with us unless she had a pair on like me. So after a mini (comical) tantrum, Eva lent her a pair of hers. Watching this little toddler wearing oversize sunglasses while walking to the water pump was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

This photo captures one of my favorite Peace Corps memories, one which really epitomized the barrier-breaking cultural interactions you can have when you embrace openness and spontaneity. I took this on the beach in Manakara back in August 2012, when I was hanging out with my friends Matt, Emily, and Nick. We were just chilling on the beach when a bunch of kids came over and started flying their homemade kite next to us. We asked them if we could help/play along, and then Matt asked them if they wanted us to bury them in the sand. Naturally, to a kid, this sounds awesome-- why NOT get buried in the sand? So we got to work, and the kids screamed and laughed and generally had a silly, fun time. I love the combined look of joy and terror on their faces in this picture.

This little ham--  he of the funny faces-- is Fanomeja ("gift" in Malagasy). He's really become one of my favorites, and unlike some of the other kids who decided it was no longer cool to hang out with me after a while, has stuck by my side. He loves to come over and color and has also been helping me in my garden lately. He is definitely one of the poorest kids in my neighborhood, and usually only has one threadbare set of clothes that he wears. So I decided that for Vingt-Six (Malagasy independence day), I would buy him a shirt and pair of pants at a frip (used clothing) seller so that he would have a nice outfit to wear on the holiday like all of the other kids. I told him to come over to my house (so that I could give it to him without all the other kids knowing), and he was so excited to have a nice set of clothes that he changed into them right then and there. Usually I'm kind of against just buying stuff for people, but he is such a genuinely sweet kid that I wanted to do something nice for him.

Here I am (looking extremely unglamorous) with my little neighbor friend, who is also named Sarobidy. I've watched him grow up into a toddler who knows how to say my name, and without fail, he'll squeak out "'kor ab' Ay-ee" (his best attempt at saying "Akory aby Emily") every time I pass by his house. Woe to me if I forget to say hi to him back! Lately I've been indulging him by giving him little rides on the back of my bike (while I walk my bike and hold on to him), and much to his constant delight, giving him piggyback rides as well.

Finally, no blog post about kids would be complete without a picture of them coloring at my house. One of the best things I did was get a set of colored pencils from a volunteer who COSed (finished his service) and invite the neighborhood kids to come over and draw pictures or color in coloring books (which my mom has been sending in care packages). In the beginning, I had them sign all of their pictures, which really helped me learn all of their names. Now they're all extremely zatra (accustomed to) coming over and using the pencils, paper, and books. In the process, they get to practice sharing and picking up after themselves. And, I love that they get to have an outlet for creative expression, which is something these kids rarely have a chance to do.

GLOW, baby, GLOW

Even before I became a Peace Corps volunteer, I had heard about and seen pictures of volunteers conducting GLOW camps. Along with world map painting, it’s a PC project that has reverberated throughout all the countries in which Peace Corps places volunteers, from Albania to Zambia. GLOW (yet another Peace Corps acronym) stands for “Girls Leading Our World”, and is a PC-designed secondary project that creates a temporary summer camp, usually about a week long, for volunteers to bring girls from their communities to spend time learning about a variety of subjects, but above all, to have fun, build confidence, and learn that there their lives have more potential than just being a mother and a housewife.

It’s been said, most notably by Nicholas Kristof, that a country’s level of development can often be gauged by looking at the status of its women. So it’s no wonder that for nearly every country that Peace Corps serves in (and which is therefore identified as ‘developing’), the majority of female citizens do not enjoy a high level of opportunity. In Madagascar, for example, the traditional gender role of a woman as a childbearer/childcarer/cook/homekeeper is still very much alive. Far too many girls get pregnant before they finish lycee (high school), and then they drop out to have the baby and get married, and their life falls into the pattern that has persisted for centuries. And then far too often, that woman’s daughter will grow up, and perhaps the family doesn’t have enough money to send her to high school (only the brother), so she gets pregnant and the cycle repeats itself all over again. So part of the goal of GLOW camps is to at least show girls that their lives are worth just as much as men’s; that they are important, they are strong, they are intelligent, and that they can make choices that will help them have the life that they want.

I’d known that I’d wanted to participate in a camp for some time, and one reason was that I don’t feel like I have very much opportunity to work with kids in my town, since my work is either office-based, or field-based working with farmers. More than anything, I just really wanted to do something for the girls in my town. So I joined up with 6 other volunteers from 4 other towns in the Sud Est to hold a GLOW camp in August. We started working on it in early spring, with Teena (a third year extension volunteer in Mananjary with previous GLOW camp experience) taking the lead to write the proposal to receive the grant money from USAID. Each town was allowed to bring 4 campers, chosen from the quatrieme (about 7^th-8^th grade) level of CEG (middle school). We decided to hold the camp in Mananjary, the northernmost town in the Sud Est region [it’s technically in the Vatovavy-Fitovinany region, but for Peace Corps purposes we group it together with the Sud Est region], which is a beautiful smaller city right on the ocean with tons of great seafood and a laid-back feel. In June I held an essay contest to choose the girls, and I worked with my counterpart Francia to choose the four best entries. So then on Saturday August 17^th, Francia and I, along with our four campers Sonia, Jemicine, Emeren, and Angelina, rolled out of Vangaindrano to start the weeklong adventure. 

The first day proved to be difficult and stressful even before we got to the camp. Jeremy, the volunteer north of me in Farafangana, and I had rented a private taxi-brousse to take us and the girls to Mananjary, otherwise we’d never be able to get there in one day. We’d reserved it in advance, revisited the brousse office multiple times to confirm, and paid half of the amount up front. But when we stopped by the brousse company office in Fara that day to doublecheck that we were all set to have them drive us home on the 23^rd, they claimed that we told them we were leaving on the 21^st, and were about to refuse to drive us. They insisted that this was not a normal route for them and that they had to obtain a special permit, and that there was no way their drivers could wait for us for the whole week. Although infinitely frustrating, this situation proved to be a good exercise for the type of problem-solving that I’ve had to perfect in the Peace Corps. When you work in a country like Madagascar, many, many things go wrong, and in fact few things go according to plan. When this happens you can either wring your hands and complain about it, or you can stop, breathe, and say “ok, this is messed up, so how do we work around it?” For this scenario, both Jeremy and I knew the company was lying—we’d never ever mentioned leaving on the 21^st, and we assumed that they’d made a mistake and were just trying to blame us to cover their asses—so I knew it wouldn’t do any good to quarrel with them. At that point there were about 6 people arguing—the driver, the brousse office worker, our 2 chaperones, and then Jeremy and myself. I took a deep breath, interjected, and calmly and quietly said to the woman, “ok, we know there was a mistake, but we still need to get to Mananjary. What can we do to make this happen?” That changed the tone of the conversation from an argument to a discussion on how to work together, and after many phone calls to Teena to figure out logistics, we worked out that we could use this brousse company for our intra-camp travel to and from Ranomafana. And so an hour later, we were finally back on the road. Although this was definitely not something that I wanted to be dealing with on the first day, I was proud of how I handled the situation, and that I was able to work through the argument in Malagasy, in the baking sun in the middle of a crowded taxi-brousse station, with 8 teenage girls impatiently waiting for us.

After picking up another PCV, Nick, and his campers in Ambalona, we finally arrived in Mananjary just as the sun was going down. We set the girls up participating in a series of icebreaker games to get to know each other, and the rest of us got to work helping to get dinner ready, because we’d been tossed another challenge: the cook we’d hired did not show up with the helper she’d promised to bring, and so she was trying to cook for 35 people alone. We finally managed to get dinner on the table—spaghetti with meat sauce—and learned our first lesson of the camp: if you’re bringing girls to an unfamiliar place, it’s best to at least give them familiar food. This dinner was too American for many of them, and that combined with my heavy-handed portions (I’m a Jewish mother even though I’m not yet a mother) meant that there was plenty of uneaten pasta on their plates at the end. But no matter, we had Nick and Jeremy, with their superhuman male PCV metabolisms, volunteer to finish it off.  After we announced this to the girls, Nick and Jeremy soon found themselves being delivered plate after plate of half-eaten pasta. And to their credit, they finished nearly all of it.

Nick and Jeremy, the pasta champs.

 After announcing the chores chart (some girls were on dish duty, while others were on cleaning and water duty), we set up the sleeping area for the girls in one of the classrooms of the CEG where they camp was being held. How do you make a sleeping area in a classroom? You MacGyver it by rigging up mosquito nets onto stacked desks, and place straw mats underneath each one. Credit goes to Jeremy and Nick for coming up with this plan.

My chief responsibilities for the camp were to conduct one session for the campers, and also to work with Jeremy to handle all things water and sanitation. This meant filling up the water filters, and keeping a constantly-stocked handwashing station for the girls to use before every meal (and thereby reinforcing the lesson that Teena taught during her health and hygiene session.) For my actual session, I decided that I wanted to teach something about money and budgeting, since I am a business volunteer. One of the main problems that I see here is that people are not used to saving money, and don’t often think long-term when it comes to planned or unplanned expenses. So this creates a problem in my area especially, when clove farmers receive a sudden windfall from their yearly harvest, and are so overwhelmed by finally having money that they spend it on things like a TV, or clothes, or alcohol, without considering that they should be saving it for the lean times. To teach this, I designed a game that was essentially a very scaled-down version of Monopoly: each girl pretended that she was 30 years old, working in an office, and was married with one school age child. After starting off with giving each girl a small amount of money as ‘savings’ to start, we then went around in a circle, and for each turn, the girl received a ‘weekly’ salary, but had to ‘spend’ (i.e. give back to me) 2/3 of it for essentials such as food, phone credit, and charcoal for cooking. Next she had the option to buy a ‘want’ item—such as new clothes, a vacation, a TV, a fancy phone, etc. But then at the end, she had to pick a card that listed a scenario in which she would have to spend money, such as buying medicine, or needing to pay for home repairs, and if she didn’t have enough money for that, she’d be out of the game. The goal was to try and teach the girls that they have to be prepared for unforeseen expenses, and even if they may technically have the money to buy a luxury item such as a TV, they need to plan for the future and make sure they have money set aside for the inevitable things in life that cost money.

Working with Ode to prepare my session. (Note: Sonia, one of my campers, had braided my hair the day before the camp. It was beautifully done and very intricate, but I look pretty awful in braids. To be considerate, I kept the braids in for a few days but I wore it half-covered with a scarf .)

Mine was one of the first sessions of the camp, and I was really nervous for how it was going to go. I spent some time preparing for it with my counterpart Francia, and Jeremy’s counterpart Ode, who is fluent in English, helped me translate some key concepts that were tricky to express in Malagasy. Thanks to their help, the session went well, and the girls had fun pretending to ‘spend’ money and be able to ‘buy’ things. Although none of them took the bait and bought the big-ticket items like a motorcycle, the act of taking away part of their (fake) money each turn to pay for something mundane (but essential) like taxi-brousse frais or a gift for a family member’s wedding reinforced the concept that life costs money, and so you have to be prepared for it by planning and saving wisely.

Me during my session, with my co-worker Francia to my right.

That night it was my turn in the rotation to sleep in the CEG with the girls and the chaperones, so I bunked down with another volunteer amidst the twittering and chattering of 20 pre-teen/teenage girls. Needless to say, I didn’t get a lot of sleep, especially because we had a very early morning wake-up call the next day: we were heading to Ranomafana! Ranomafana is a beautiful national park and eco-tourist attraction about a 4 hour drive inland from Mananjary. It’s one of Madagascar’s conservation success stories, and is a living, breathing example of how when tourism is developed responsibly, income generation and wildlife conservation can go hand in hand. The girls were really excited to visit (a first time for most of them), and so after loading up in the taxi-brousses, we made our way through the twisting rainforest roads. Our first stop in Ranomafana was the arboretum, which is where my fellow Peace Corps volunteer Jesse works. Jesse met us there and helped with our programming for the girls, which included a nutrition session (conducted by Nick) and an arboretum scavenger hunt to help the girls learn about the different types of plants and trees in Madagascar. Then we headed to the CEG, which Jesse had helped arrange as a place for us to sleep and eat for the 2 nights of our visit.

The group at the Ranomafana arboretum.

The next day, we were scheduled to take a guided hike of the rainforest (and hopefully get to spot lots of lemurs and chameleons), but we woke up to a drizzly, gray day, so we postponed the hike to the afternoon, and instead started the day at the Centre ValBio, which is a beautiful research facility and is Jesse’s other workplace. The girls did a session on study skills with Jeremy and Ode, and then they got to enjoy a special treat enjoyed by Jesse: some time to play around with laptop computers. Most of these girls have never really even seen a computer, let alone been able to use one, so this was a new and exciting experience. The computers were One Laptop Per Child laptops, also known as the $100 laptop, and are very durable and easy to use; Jesse had secured them from a Canadian NGO last year for use in his town. They have a proprietary operating system which is designed to be intuitive for kids, and sure enough, the girls picked up how to use them in a heartbeat, and were quickly drawing pictures, taking photos, typing messages, and even playing around with the computer-to-computer chat. They all had a blast and hated to leave, but we had to get them back for lunch. After lunch, we piled back into the buses and drove up the mountain to the park entrance for our forest hike. Although the animals are more active in the mornings, we nevertheless did get to see some bamboo lemurs, which was the first time I’d seen that type of lemur, and perhaps the first time ever seeing a lemur for many of the girls. Our park tour guide was excellent, and you could sense his pride in showing these girls the forest. One of the most poignant things he said was when he talked about how foreign tourists spend thousands of dollars to come here to see the wildlife, and so the girls should feel proud to be Malagasy and call this country home.

Me showing some of the girls how to use a laptop. Pardon my tired, haggard appearance... it was a sleepless week.

I love the look of pure joy on Sonia's face here.

And Emeren's face of happiness, too!

The next day, we gave the girls the option to stay in town and visit the natural hot water pool in town (Ranomafana means “hot water”, and is so named after the local hot springs), or to go back to Mananjary and visit the beach. About ¾ of the girls preferred to visit the hot springs, so I stayed behind with them and one of our hired taxi-brousses, while the other volunteers went back to Mananjary with the other campers. Seeing the joy in the girls’ faces as they splashed around made me extremely happy: between schoolwork and helping out around the house, these girls barely get a chance to relax, let alone visit a place like Ranomafana. I felt extremely fortunate and glad that I was able to give them this small chance to take a trip and just have fun.

The Vangaindrano girls at Ranomafana! From left: Jemicine, Sonia, Emeren, me (who else sticks out this much?), Francia, and Angelina)

After returning to Mananjary for lunch, more sessions, and then dinner, we set up a special treat for the girls: a campfire with s’mores. It doesn’t get much more typical American summer camp than that! After the s’mores, the bonfire evolved into a dance party where they’d call someone into the center to dance as everybody clapped and cheered. Inevitably, all of us PCVs got called into dance quite often, but I gamely made a fool out of myself dancing, and had fun doing it.

Jeremy instructing on s'more creation.

Me and my campers in our GLOW camp t-shirts!

The next day was our final day of camp, and although the girls wanted the camp to go longer, all of us PCVs and chaperones were ready for it to end: with all the planning, preparation, and daily work, it had been an exhausting experience! We finished off the camp with a few more sessions and a career panel where successful Malagasy women spoke to the campers about their education and career paths. Then we distributed camp t-shirts to all the girls and took some photos, before heading over to a nearby dance club (at 3pm, mind you) for our special end-of-camp party, expertly arranged by Nick. The girls got a chance to dance with the club all to themselves, plus enjoy soda and tsaky-tsaky (fried snacks such as samosas and french fries), and once again, they didn’t want to leave.

The next day we all had early-morning wake up calls to get everything and everyone packed up and ready to go home. Despite our brousse debacle the week before, the transportation home ended up being fine, and our driver showed up at 8AM for the long trip back to Vangaindrano (but first, Ambalona to drop off Nick and his girls, then Farafangana for Jeremy and his crew.) It was a long, long trip back home, and Francia, Emeren, Jemicine, Angelia, Sonia, and I were all ecstatic once we finally pulled into Vangaindrano at around 6pm. What struck me was that when we had all left Vangaindrano a week ago, the girls were shy, quiet, and not talking much. But when we rolled back into town, we were all joyful and exuberant, blasting Rihanna and dancing and singing along together. It may not have been much, but my small effort to have a little impact on these girls’ lives already seemed to have brought out their confidence and happiness. And for that, I came home elated.

Shake it!

Some funny videos of my neighborhood kids dancing.